


around and around and around (let's go again)

by problematiquefave



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst and Feels, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 15:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17062658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/problematiquefave/pseuds/problematiquefave
Summary: Reincarnation, n: the rebirth of a soul into a new body.Or, five of the many lives Troy and Nick have shared.





	around and around and around (let's go again)

Sometimes they remember.

Sometimes they don’t.

It seems to come down to how far they get – though, if it doesn’t, it’s not like they could tell. They’ve lived a hundred, a thousand lifetimes, and if one gets lost along the way, it’s hard to notice. The highs, the lows, the pleasures, and the pains. Even the happiest of lifetimes has a bittersweet ending but they try again. They find each other _again_.

This latest one was something out of a horror movie.

Nick finds himself in the gutter, scrabbling for his next hit. _Nick_. It’s not the first time that’s been his name – when it’s not, it’s usually some derivative. But then everything shifts, tilting and shaking and crashing to the ground. The world _ends_ , the dead rise, and society collapses. The terror he feels when he sees Calvin rise to his feet is similar to when Alicia – then Alice, in the Southern regions of modern day France – begin showing symptoms of the Black Death. Of course, he doesn’t remember that. In this life, he never has the chance to remember though he does meet Troy.

Troy has never been a saint. No matter the time or place, they’re always children of violence. But in this one… Well, it’s one of his worst incarnations. He’s not always a murderer by the time they meet but this time he has forty bodies to his name. He adds more along the way. Yet it doesn’t drive Nick away. He’s disgusted with his attitudes but ashamed that it doesn’t repulse him more. Even when he wipes out an entire community, when he almost gets Alicia killed, when he destroys their last glimmer of familiarity… Even then, Nick can’t push him away.

They almost reach that point of remembering. They get high in a crowded, dusty trading post; they cover themselves in blood and walk among the dead. Troy holds him, arms heavy and warm against Nick’s body. Nick wants to, he really does – he looks at Troy’s lips but fear grips him, anxiety drags him down. They go to bed separately and by morning they’re headed to the dam. By afternoon, Troy is dead.

It’s not the first time they’ve been cut short. It’s not the first time one of them outlives the other. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.

 

 

It’s hard to say what their first life was. Going back that far, the memories start to blur together – the names, the meetings, the deaths get mixed and jumbled. But of those early lives, one stands above the rest. It stands in a walled city, one that’s nothing but ash and rubble by the time their story comes to an end.

Nick is Nikandros, a nobody really. Just another face in a sea of soldiers sent to Troy. He travels under the Boeotian flag, eating and sleeping in their camp on the white sand beaches. It’s his country but he spends far more time in the fields and forests with a jug of strong wine. And it’s one of those forests where he meets _him_.

He isn’t Troy this time, though the city that looms above them is. He is _Tros_ , named for the king who founded the city and inspired its name. He is one of Priam’s many of children – a prince but not one special enough to go down in history. He’s favored by no Gods, hunted by no kings. But he’s still not one to be trifled with. Nick doesn’t seem him coming until there’s a dagger at his neck and breath washing over his skin.

It should end there. Troy should kill him, slaughter the enemy soldier and go back inside the walls of his home. Yet he doesn’t. He tosses Nick to the ground, standing above him as his jug of wine shatters against the Earth. He looks down at him with disdain. Nick can only imagine the unkind things running through his head.

“These are the men Greece sends?” he asks in a thick accent. “Drunken cowards?”

Nick has a lot of responses for that but his tongue is heavy and all he can eventually spit out is, “Sorry to disappoint.”

Troy hauls him to his feet and the dagger is back, sharp against his skin. “I should kill you,” he says but he doesn’t and that’s Nick’s takeaway, even when he’s back at camp that night reliving the moments again and again. He has to know why and it drives him back to the forest, back to where they met and where the shattered remains of the wine jug lay.

He’s not alone. Troy comes back too. They dance around one another, wary and cautious and always expecting the other to end this game with a bloody weapon. Nick never forgets the dagger resting on the prince’s hips. But as the war rages on, six months becoming one year and one year becoming two, it slowly starts to shift. Threats and insults become fewer, genuine conversations start dominate their time, and they both begin to look forward to their next meeting.

This is a life where they _remember_. In the clearing where they first met, Troy shoves him to the ground again but there’s no weapon, just open-mouthed kisses and fiery lust. They consummate their relationship in the dirt and when they break apart, they lay side by side. There’s no afterglow. They are still on opposing sides of a war without end and now they know their history, know how many times this has ended badly.

“We could leave,” Nick murmurs against his neck during one of their meetings. “Egypt or further. We could go to Babylon.”

Troy pulls away from him, looking down at him with sad eyes. “I won’t abandon my home. I won’t leave my family.” He speaks with finality. Even though Nick wants to ask, beg, and plead countless times over the ensuing years, he remembers that and doesn’t.

It’s not that their time is short. They have ten years to know and love one another but that can’t change fate. Troy falls, the city is sacked. Nick finds him tucked away in a small room of the palace, wild-eyed and barring his dagger. He rushes Nick without even recognizing him. He doesn’t miss. The wound is fatal, though not instantly so. He holds Nick in his arms, tears sliding down his cheeks as his lover takes his final breaths. The death rattle rings in his ears.

Another Greek soldier stumbles upon the room later. He stops, trying to understand the sight before him – the dead Trojan prince draped over the dead Greek soldier.

At least they die together.

 

 

The life before their latest involves a different epidemic.

At least they have a few years together before it’s splashed across every headline.

They meet in a club in San Francisco; the year is in 1978 and the lights are bright, the smoke is thick, and The Bee Gees have 3 hit singles. Nick is Nick once again and his eyes are blood shot but they manage to find Troy in the crowd anyways.

He’s got a glass of water in front of him and he’s holding onto the table with a white-knuckle grip. Nick saunters up to him, sliding into the booth beside him without concern for the glare it earns him. He’s not thinking straight but he can tell that Troy isn’t either. It’s not for the same reasons – he’s haunted, not high, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a connection.

They share a stronger connection later that night, in Nick’s one bedroom apartment, on his unwashed sheets. Though the memories that come flooding back are ostensibly what keeps them up, he can tell that Troy wouldn’t be sleeping anyways.

“Who’re you ghosts?” he asks, bringing two cups of coffee back to the bedroom. The alarm clock on the bedside table reads _2:09am_.

“Vietnam,” is his answer. Nick doesn’t need more.

They finally fall asleep around dawn and stay in bed until noon. “First time I slept like that in a long while,” is how Troy greets him when they finally wake up. Nick smiles at him, thrumming his fingers against his bare chest. They kiss again, like lovers that have been together for ages – not just for a night. And that’s how they go through day and the following night.

They move in together without question. Two weeks after meeting, one week after his father had written his son off as hanging from the rafters somewhere, Troy goes back to his home and collects his things. The old man asks him where he’s been but he doesn’t answer and doesn’t come back. They know what they need and it’s each other.

They’ve had happy lives and bittersweet but mostly sweet endings before; they’ve had even ones where Nick struggles to kick his addition and Troy struggles to sleep through the night. This seems like it’s shaping up to be just another one of those. Another one where, even though they can’t get married, they have and hold each other from that day forth – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, ‘till death do they part.

It’s not that they don’t. It’s just… They never _imagined_. No one did. Even as friends and acquaintances in the community started to grow inexplicably sick. Not until 1981 rolled around and 271 gay men had been diagnosed with severe immune deficiency, 121 of whom had already died.

In September of 1982, the CDC named it for the first time. AIDS – acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It could affect anyway but most cases were found among gay men and intravenous drug users. 

They knew this; they followed the news closely as more and more people around them grew sick. They knew the odds. They held each other at night, silently understanding how quickly this could all change. How the reaper waited for no one. Though Nick finally managed to quit, they knew it was a waiting game more than anything else.

They were right.

Nick got sick first. Troy couldn’t pronounce the name of the disease and they didn’t have the money to even try and treat it. “Make him comfortable,” the doctor said, standing at the entrance to his hospital room on the day Nick was being discharged. “And…” He looked at Troy, pressing lips into a thin line. “I wish you luck.”

Wishes meant nothing. Six months after Nick’s passing, Troy followed him into the beyond.

 

 

Their latest life is also not the first one that mimics a horror movie – but, instead of zombies, this one is about witches.

Born a decade before the turn of the seventeenth century in southwestern Germany – Nick, christened Niklas this time, is nobody important. The son of a tenant farmer, destined for a short life toiling in the fields. He isn’t even interesting, or at least he doesn’t think so, but the people of his village have different ideas. Shrewd eyes watch him stumble drunkenly through town. They wake him from where he passes out after Sunday mass. They _whisper_ about his demons, about his addiction and his lack of faith. Those whispers fuel rumors and those rumors fuel suspicion. _Drunkard_ and _lout_ soon switch to _witch_ and _devil-worshipper_.

Eventually, those rumors spread out from their little village – reaching the ear of a man known for hunting witches. Otto, is his name and this job is his heritage from his father. No one mentioned, or maybe no one cared, what his family did before they hunted, why his mother was drowned in a river, or the necklace of teeth around his neck. And, of course, no one knew in another life he would lead a herd of the dead – far more devilish a deed than anything Nick the drunk ever did.

When Troy arrives in this little farming community, he has no trouble tracking Nick down to some unplowed field. He smashes the so-called-witch’s drink beneath his boot and, like in another life, holds a blade to his throat. Nick’s response isn’t the same. He surges up, dodging the glinting metal, and dragging Troy to the ground. Kneeling above, wild-eyed and panting, it’s another familiar scene.

“I don’t know how you are,” Nick slurs, “but that’s not a nice way to greet a stranger.”

Troy looks up at him with narrowed eyes but he doesn’t fight; Nick has his hands around the hunter’s neck and he knows better than to try his luck. “It’s an effective way to greet a witch.”

He blinks at Troy before devolving into a fit of cackles that do nothing to prove his humanity. “A witch? A _goddamned_ witch?” He shakes his head. “I can’t even—”

Before he can finish his sentence, Troy pushes up. They roll through the grass, clawing and punching and looking more like two animals than people. Neither comes out on top. Troy has bloody lines down his cheek and Nick has a bite mark on his shoulder. He also has a necklace of human teeth in his hand. He sits up, looking with disgust at the… Well, it really can’t be called jewelry.

“I’m the one being accused of witchcraft,” he says in disbelief, “but you’re the one wearing creepy shit like this.”

Troy is on his feet, crouched and ready to pounce at a moment’s second. He’s wound tighter than a coil but he remains frighteningly still, his expression stony as he glares at Nick. “They’re trophies. One for every witch I’ve killed.” His lips twitch with a sneer. “You’re next.”

“Then you’ll have to catch me first.”

Nick is on his feet, running in the opposite direction and towards the woods. He leaves Troy in the dirt, the hunter smirking in his wake. He’s used to the fight, enjoys it even, but this is different. This is special. He decides to make it even more fun and give Nick a head start as he goes back to his horse. Witch or not, Nick will still be dead by nightfall but it’s not like Troy has anywhere else to be.

After a sufficient time has passed, he mounts his steed and squeezes his legs around it, encouraging it on. He keeps a watchful eye in the dirt, following Nick’s footprints. A place like this could easily earn a reputation for being cursed or haunted but Troy isn’t afraid. He never is. He hunts his prey, noticing without fail when those footprints stop at the base of a tree. Clever but not clever enough. He pulls a flintlock pistol from his belt and points it into the leaves.

“Come out or I shoot.”

There’s a long moment where the only sound in his ears is birdsong – but then the foliage above him begins to rustle, and Nick slides down the trunk of one of the trees. His lips are pursed in a frown, his hands held in the air. Troy points his gun at him. “I came down,” the accused says. “Don’t shoot.

Troy laughs. “You must be a bad witch if you think I’m going to keep my word.”

“I’m not a witch,” Nick insists.

Troy shrugs in response. “Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. I get paid either way.”

Nick’s eyes widen but it’s too late. The gunshot rings through the forest and all the birds fall silent. His body drops to the ground, eyes open but unseeing.

This is not a life where they remember. This is not a life where Nick escapes Troy’s violent temper. This is not a life that ends happily – for, one day, Troy will meet the same feet as Nick. His necklace of trophies and his mother’s own execution will be used against him. _“You are a witch,”_ they’ll say to him, with chains around his wrists and ankles, and there’s nothing he’ll be able to say to convince them otherwise. Just like there was nothing Nick or any of his other victims could say to stop him.

 

 

If you sorted their many lives onto a scale with one side representing the happy endings and one side representing the sad ones, you’d find them unbalanced. Even the good ones always end in death. But there are _some_ good ones. Some that aren’t just pain and suffering, some that aren’t cut tragically short. And while most are unremarkable, there are some that are more.

A brief glance at this life doesn’t suggest it’ll be among the better. Nick – Nicolanius, in this life, the child of a Roman senator and a well-off member of the Patrician class, has it set but Troy… Troy does not. He doesn’t even have a name until he comes under the ownership of Statius’ household. A slave, among the conquered of the greatest empire known to mankind. His life should be brutal and short, and Nick should never come near him.

If only they ever did what they should.

Their stories would certainly be different.

Troy’s job is primarily in the courtyard – tending to the gardens, washing the stone pathways. He’s rarely inside and only ever to sleep and eat. Then there’s one night, after a week of the slave quarter’s being ravaged by sickness, that leads Troy to being dragged in from the cold to serve at a banquet. That one night is all it takes to catch Nick’s eye and set in motion their story that never ends.

Nick… Well Nick’s drunk or maybe he’s high; he’s always some degree of under the influence and it’s clear to everyone but especially to Troy when the young man grabs his wrist and whispers in his ear. “My room, tonight.”

He goes that night not because he wants to but because he knows his place, as much as he hates it. He is below and Nick is above. But when he arrives and stands over Nick’s prone, passed out form, it doesn’t really feel that way. He feels like he’s looking down at a child; the desire to pull his covers over his shoulders doesn’t help – especially when he gives into it. He leaves as quickly as he came.

Nick finds him in the garden the next morning.

“I didn’t see you last night,” he says, drawing Troy’s attention from the plants. He’s shocked that Nick even remembers and nonplussed that he still has to deal with this.

He had accepted his fate – that short and cruel life, the one where he worked himself to the bone for a family who couldn’t care less, and would be buried with a hundred others like him when he finally gave up. He doesn’t appreciate Nick stepping in and complicating things. It’s never not complicated when nobility is involved.

But Nick… He doesn’t care, looking expectantly down at Troy.

“You were unconscious,” he says finally, looking away and biting back the sigh that builds in his lungs. “I tried to wake you and left when I couldn’t.” It’s a lie – Troy ran the second he realized he could – but it’s not like he can say otherwise.

“Well…” Nick shrugs. “I’d like it if you came back tonight.”

He’s not sure what possesses him to answer the way he does – the way he knows will earn him a lashing for his disrespect but he does anyways. “I’m not interested.”

Surprising him for a second time that day, Nick says, “Then you don’t have to.” He pauses before adding, “Or you could come and we could just talk.”

“Why?”

Nick runs a hand through his hair. “You interest me.”

He stares at the man, face void of thoughts or expressions. He doesn’t know what to think of that. But… Something deep inside of him, something inexplicable, tells him to agree. He bites his tongue, drawing up a list of all the reasons why he _shouldn’t_ , how this would all end disastrously for him, and then… Then he says yes.

As he quickly learns, Nick is just as inexplicable. There’s a certain undercurrent of drunken debauchery to all his actions but it doesn’t stem from the same places it comes from in other people of his station. He’s not licentious, he’s not immoral, he’s not even arrogant. He’s just _sad_. His humor is off-color and he doesn’t adhere to customs the way he should. He doesn’t treat Troy like he should – they talk, he listens, and he cares.

Being associated with Nick is _dangerous_. It’s not just because he’s reckless when he’s drunk. He’s dangerous because of the things that make him different. He cares and it’s dangerous for Troy to know that someone does. He listens and it’s dangerous for Troy to feel heard. He treats Troy like an equal and it’s dangerous for him because of the attention it draws. But with every passing day, every moment stolen with him, Troy cares less and less.

He’s aware of Nick’s mother’s sharp gazes. Lady Messalina has cold eyes that find him more and more. He tries to ignore her, taking Nick’s advice, but it doesn’t work. Working in the gardens one afternoon, pulling weeds out from the roots of a tree, he feels something sharp and cool against his neck. He freezes with his knees and hands in the dirt, smudges on his cheeks. His pulse is pounding in his ears and he can barely hear her over it. His tongue is as heavy as stone – even if she had permitted him to talk, which she explicitly doesn’t, he wouldn’t be able to.

But he doesn’t need too. Nick swoops in like a god-sent guardian. He knocks the blade from her hands and throws a hard-hitting punch as Troy scrambles to his feet.

“If you touch him again,” he says, standing over his mother’s prone form. She stares up at him with a mixture of horror and fury as he continues. “I’ll kill you.”

He doesn’t give her the time to respond, his fingers entwining with Troy’s and pulling him off into the house. He stumbles after Nick, shocked and fearful as he’s guided back to the rooms where this all started. They let go when the door to Nick’s room shuts behind them; Troy remains standing by it as Nick stumbles towards his bed, collapsing into the sheets.

“I’m sorry she did that,” he murmurs. “I thought…”

Troy can see ghosts in his eyes. He pads across the floor, kneeling by the side of the bed. He reaches out for Nick, brushing his thumb over the other’s cheek. “I love you.”

Nick stares at him silently. The seconds tick by, the moment stretching on and on and on. Eventually, he leans forward; he presses his lips to Troy’s, tender and loving. It’s not the end when they break apart. Troy crawls into the bed beside Nick and they _remember_. It cements the bond that has grown between them. It affirms that they’ll never be apart again.

There are attempts over the years to split them. After Nick’s father dies, Lady Messalina tries to accuse Troy of the death. He’s arrested and tossed in a tiny, filthy cage. That he gets a trial at all is a miracle. She isn’t there but Nick arrives midway through, huffing and puffing and with _proof_. Or well, someone else to pin the blame on. He’s free by that evening, wrapped around Nick in the bed they share. He doesn’t ask if that was real the murderer. He does ask what happened to his mother.

“She won’t bother us again,” Nick whispers.

That’s good enough for him.

Though Nick isn’t the only one who deals with their detractors, he has more power and defense than Troy does. But Troy… He’s strong, fast, and clever. When someone tries to accuse him of sorcery – of manipulating Nick with magic – he kills them. Nick washes the blood off of him and places open-mouthed kisses on all of his bruises.

Above all, they are survivors.

But even then, their story comes to an end – when their hands are wrinkled and their eyes are tired, when they’ve lived full lives defying the world and are able to go onto the next one with pride.

 

 

They’ve lived hundreds – maybe thousands – of lives before. They’ve been happy, they’ve been sad, they’ve suffered through tragedies, and they’ve overcome hardships. They’ve died young and they’ve lived to old age. They have been Nick and Troy and they’ve been many other things. Kings, princes, soldiers, drunks, and witches. Sometimes they’ve loved, sometimes they’ve hated.

Their stories didn’t end in Troy or in Rome or in 1984. They’ve persisted through epidemics and fallen empires. And they’ll persist, even through the end of the world.

They’ll be born in again – in another life, in another place, in another scenario.

And, maybe this time, they can get it right. If they don’t, they can try again.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation for why this took over a month to edit. I truly don't. At least I didn't cry while editing ~~since I did while writing~~. Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> You can also find me on [Tumblr](https://problematiquefics.tumblr.com/) and [Dream Width](https://problematiquefave.dreamwidth.org/).


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